Revit door numbers are not unique

[MikeJarosz]

I made a quick door schedule to export 3 fields into Excel: the door number (mark), from-room and to-room. My intent is to create a "super" door schedule. I'm using the Revit export DB add-in. That tool does not export schedules, only objects. Furthermore, when it exports door objects it does not include to/from data. I realized I could make a schedule in Revit and export it to Excel, then import the Excel table into Access as a new table. The door number becomes the relational link between the door table and the imported to/from table. That's the theory.

However........

I got as far as assigning properties in Access to the imported table fields. When I tried to make the door number the key, Access notified me that the door numbers were not unique. I went back to the Excel file and sure enough, there were MANY duplicate door numbers, triples even!!! We are in SD and none of our doors have been tagged. In fact, most of the team has been working unaware that Revit has been generating door numbers. Out of 1680 doors, there were 46 duplicates, much more than I would expect from user error. I think that these duplications must have been generated by Revit. Is it possible that Revit numbers by level? That would explain why dupes could occur.:cry:

Is it too much to expect Revit to maintain a unique list of door numbers? Why would such a situation even occur? More importantly, is there an expedited way to find and fix the dupes, short of tediously visiting each one?

[jsteinhauer]

Mike,

This depends on how your door families are built. If you have Shared Nested Panels, then Revit will assign multiple numbers to each Parent Door, one for the Parent & one for each Shared Nested Panel. Revit will not duplicate the numbers, but when users start going through and renumbering the Parent doors, there is a high probability they will assign a number already in use. To take care of this you should have a schedule that displays the parent & the nested panel by room number. Then change the panel to RM#/DR#+lower case identifier. If you had a double door in room 1001, the Parent might be 1001 & the nested panels would be 1001a & 1001b. If you had multiple doors in one room it might look like 1001A, 1001Aa & 1001Ab, 1001B 1001Ba & 1001Bb.

Hope this helps,
Jeff S.

[Steve_Stafford]

One "unseen" cause of duplicate mark values (Door numbering) is worksharing and multiple users in their own local files adding doors at the same time. Revit is not sophisticated in how it chooses the next number for a door, it just remembers what the previous number was. If I start placing doors and the last door mark was 106 then Revit uses 107 for the next door. If another person starts placing doors Revit remembers that 106 was the last mark for their local copy of the project too. When both of us sync with central two doors with a mark value of 107 appear in the database and Revit generates a warning for duplicate mark values. It only cares about family categories that it automatically numbers, like doors, windows, light fixtures, air terminals...rooms...

Users can certainly attempt to reuse door mark values but a warning should appear and they'd have to ignore it. Once doors have numbers that correspond with their rooms the duplicate marks usually "resolve themselves", assuming rooms get numbered properly. Same issue can occur with rooms....

Users can avoid the duplicate marks by coordinating the door placement effort and/or using a personal prefix in front of the doors they put in the model so every door has a unique value.

[MikeJarosz]

Thanks for the explanation. Maybe the Revit internal numbering procedure could be improved by checking with central instead of relying on the local. BTW, we do have 6 users in two offices working on this one file.

I thought I should share the method I used to find the dupes. Export a door schedule to Excel. Sort the room numbers (mark) in ascending order. Starting with the second door add a formula in a blank column and copy it down to the last door. The formula is =IF((A76=A75),"DUP",""). What this does is compare the current door number to the one above it. If they are equal, it displays "DUP", if they are not equal it displays nothing. I found all the dupes in 1600 doors in a few minutes time.

In the following screen capture I didn't freeze the headers. Column A is the door number. B & C are to/from room numbers. I simplified the number of fields. A true schedule would of course show much more info than this........

92086

[Steve_Stafford]

In Revit on the manage tab, Review Warnings. All the duplicate mark value warnings will be reported here. The GUID of each element involved will be listed and you can export the report to HTML and work through the list. You can also just create a native Revit door schedule and sort by the mark value. All the same numbered doors should end up next to each other. Add columns for From Room and To Room and you can resolve most if not all of the door numbers against their room...or download one of the door/room numbering apps out there to automatically match up room numbers to doors.

[MikeJarosz]

Thank You

[DaveP]

One of the other tricks I've used is to create a new Door Schedule sorted by Mark. You might want to include the To: Room or something, but all you really need is the Mark
Itemize every instance and put a blank line after each.
Then you can just scroll through the entire list and if there are duplicates, you'll see two white lines next to each other.
By no means automatic, but it's pretty easy to spot duplicates.

I'd upload an image, but evidently I'm maxed out on my AUGI allocation.

[patricks]

One "unseen" cause of duplicate mark values (Door numbering) is worksharing and multiple users in their own local files adding doors at the same time. Revit is not sophisticated in how it chooses the next number for a door, it just remembers what the previous number was. If I start placing doors and the last door mark was 106 then Revit uses 107 for the next door. If another person starts placing doors Revit remembers that 106 was the last mark for their local copy of the project too. When both of us sync with central two doors with a mark value of 107 appear in the database and Revit generates a warning for duplicate mark values. It only cares about family categories that it automatically numbers, like doors, windows, light fixtures, air terminals...rooms...

Users can certainly attempt to reuse door mark values but a warning should appear and they'd have to ignore it. Once doors have numbers that correspond with their rooms the duplicate marks usually "resolve themselves", assuming rooms get numbered properly. Same issue can occur with rooms....

Users can avoid the duplicate marks by coordinating the door placement effort and/or using a personal prefix in front of the doors they put in the model so every door has a unique value.

Steve,

In my experience every time that happens, a message will pop up during the SWC operation that says "elements were renumbered to prevent duplicates" or some such language like that. It doesn't just leave things with duplicate mark numbers. The same goes for any such object with mark numbers - could be doors, windows, any generic model, etc. whether they're scheduled or not. If there is an incremental mark number assigned to the element when it's placed, and multiple people are placing objects of the same category, then Revit will update numbers to prevent any duplicates during SWC.

oh and I'm almost caught up with you on post count LOL :p

[Steve_Stafford]

Sorry you are confusing the warning you get when you load the same family into a project as another person and use SwC. The renaming of a family or type because a duplicate is loaded is a different kettle of fish.

Two users placing doors at the same time can generate messages like the two attached images. One is the message that appears at the end of using SwC and the other is the Review Warning dialog. Any element that Revit automatically assigns a mark value for can have this happen too. Try it... create a central file, open two sessions of Revit that have different usernames, each user adds five doors and then SwC.

It is easy to avoid if you know it happens. Just enter a unique door number for the first door you place. If I put "S" in front of each door number then I'd have S1, S2, S3 etc. When I SwC the other user's doors will have a different number because my "S" ensures it isn't the same "next" number that Revit thinks is next in their local file.

[jsteinhauer]

I'd upload an image, but evidently I'm maxed out on my AUGI allocation.

There is a limit to the amount of uploaded data you can have? I thought there was just a limit on file size. This thread is a perfect example of, "There is more than one way to make PETA upset". Depending on how your doors are created you could be looking at a number of different circumstances to cause & resolve this issue. Most of them are done without even leaving Revit.

Cheers,
Jeff S.

[patricks]

Probably with the introduction of the new forum software, each user's attachments are now limited to a total of 50 MB.

[Steve_Stafford]

There has always been a limit but the amount may have been changed or just reached in his case. All forum software offers the organizer the option to constrain how much data can be posted since it costs money to store and make the data available via bandwidth and server storage.